All rights revert to individual authors
upon publication.
Cover adapted from
a photo by Travis Macdonald
Book design & typesetting
by JenMarie Macdonald
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Fact-Simile Editions
Fact-Simile Magazine
Number 11

Fact-Simile is edited and published
by Travis and JenMarie Macdonald in
Lancaster, PA.

Dear Reader:
We’ve been running late. We’ve been running really late. After
bringing books into the world together for 9 years on a more or
less consistent basis, we started a new collaboration last year. We
brought a person into the world. Now that he’s starting to learn
about how time works, we’re starting to re-learn how time works.
So if you’ve been waiting to hear from us, thanks for your patience
and compassion.
As if parenthood wasn’t scary enough, we now find ourselves
responsible for raising up this child amid the most terrifying political
and social climate this country has seen in a long time. As a nation
we are dangerously divided between increasingly distant extremes.
There is carelessly incendiary rhetoric spouting from the mouth of
a man elected by the minority. It is threatening the safety of our
friends, our family, and our democracy on a daily basis.
We must admit that, when we took our son to the voting booth last
November, we expected we’d wake up to a different world the
next day. We expected to celebrate the first woman raised up to
our nation’s highest office. We expected that the first president he
would remember would be a mother. Not a rapacious demagogue.
This is not the world we expected. But here we are. How do we
confront this new reality? How do we manage our fears in the
face of daily threats? How do we teach our son (and ourselves)
the strength and conviction of compassionate action in the face of
government sanctioned hate and intentional ignorance?
As writers, artists, publishers, and now parents, we believe the path
through this darkness must be cut by language. By the tongues and
pens of people who see through the smoke and can rewrite the
fire into light. We believe that the only way forward in the face of
institutional destruction is to turn to the creators. The makers. The
mothers.
And so we dedicate this overdue issue of Fact-Simile to you.
In Solidarity,
Travis & JenMarie
The Editors

4

Fact-Simile

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We, the editors at Fact-Simile, would like to thank the following individuals, entities and institutions
for their continued support, without which none of this would be possible:
Our Readers
Our Contributors
Philalalia
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

To all of the little girls who are watching this
The voice goes here
Goes labor exhausting
What us say is what
Us use against us
Outside the window outside
The decision to make a painting
In the basement forever
Here nothing coheres never
We got here got her
Happening to voice

7

8

Fact-Simile

Kim Gek Lin Short

MOTHER THE ENDS

The day it happened, the night it was happening, the weeks before when it was thought impossible to happen, we all
studied the crystal balls our media swirled upon our senses. Economy. Climate. Sexuality. We book-lovers and equalitywanters and back-to-the-landers treading oblivion in myopic matter and indignation at crotch-grabbing. And now? Now
that it has happened1, we are still studying, explaining how. How did all of this happen without us seeing? We are pretty
smart. Fairly educated. We have the benefit of polls and their erudite algorithms. It seems impossible that we could have
been so blind. But we were. A disappearing trick was played on the liberal bunches. Strings of the stupid propping this
pathology of a man—the 45th President?—who somehow swayed an invisible masses2.
Or did he? I’m not sure. But I do know that our culture’s preoccupation with means over ends voted. This preoccupation
might be worse at this moment than it has ever been in my lifetime, and that’s saying something because I lived through
the 80s. We inhabit a history/economy that profits from self-serving predation and our middle class is disappearing,
and the established patterns of our climate are disappearing, and our sexuality3 is also disappearing. If we are being
honest, the Invisible Masses is everything that is visible. No trick was played. This (he) is Means-to-an-Ends personified.
Which noun in that equation should we focus on? We must focus less on means and we need to act love speak mother
mostly ends. Mother: arguably the most ends-centric occupation ever. This is how we obtain freedom. Mother the ends.
Because the only lacuna in our line of sight is everything before the ends. This is how we revolutionize everything: by
revolutionizing the mother of all masses—our collective inclusive mother-gland.

1

Now that it has happened, I want my mom.
2
The obvious reference—The Invisible Man—is philosophically diffcult in the context of the so-called
Trumpenproletariat and whitelash.
3
We are so sexualized that sexuality is disappearing. Everything is about the means. The means to the sex begins
to endanger the sex itself.

Fact-Simile

9

Cynthia Arrieu-King

Taking Two Old Selves to New York
The elderly swept their arms up in unison.
Pushing up the heavens. Lion growing. Rain falling.

At night, the stars chucked plentiful
against the blackness, full of nothing but discount lightning.

The hectic of Manhattan, drawer of sidewalk
and wine, no room to pass either side.
Five billion people, those were the days.

To cover the world with more apples
to cover the gravel around back porches
and also to show you what and who endures in the nowhere pavilion of necessities,
as if to say
oh selves, oh friends, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve lived out
a remove from our lips

all dependency once felt has left

all grass once seed has leapt

*

I awoke, shining
eyes at the other side of a lakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s alarm
apple in my stomach played a lunar light

10

Fact-Simile

Sunset scrolled with clouds
the northwest rained some tenses
and as if out in the country
two selves walk away from the corner
each down their separate roads
towards the multiverse

Consider how to call the other world,
yourself in the middle of all spines
your best entirely imagined pine scent
a best place to make a call to the ancestors
to see where you are part of the violence
error free choice to add to these nail and yarn dolls, harm or good
as you hang so disappointed by the stench
which is ongoing

Fact-Simile

Danielle Pafunda

MILK PULL

A mother runs out of milk for her children. After her children board their school bus, the mother
assembles herself behind the wheel of her car. She drives to the next town where there is a store. While
in the store, a translucent woman, likely a resident of the next town, follows her everywhere asking *is
it cold in that freezer? Do the droplets of water run off the vegetables? Is that a chicken in among the
turkeys?* This goes on for many more aisles than one would think this store has, and more hours than
the mother can afford to spend in the town where she doesn’t live. The children return earlier each
day. The sun drops quickly, midnight comes, no one has bathed, and the cats loose grasshoppers in
the bedrooms. Still, through an anxious sheen, the mother notes needful things in every exponentially
expanding aisle. *Do those lightbulbs have eco-friendly filaments? Would you have thought cats like
leopard print, themselves? Who dreams up all the flavors of mouthwash?* It’s curious they haven’t
moved her interlocutor to the next next town where young commuters shop for the older residents.
Then again, the woman pushes an empty cart. Or rather, the cart is always there, just within reach. At
last the mother reaches the dairy cases. Blocks of cheese like promises kept. Unsavory cream made
from oil, resin, and flavors. She reaches for a jug of milk, and finds that the milk must be frozen. It is
as heavy as the stocks that hang one’s head. Heavy. Her head lurches as though she has just become
3D. The mother waits for her shadow—not her shadow—the woman who lets light through, shadow’s
opposite. The mother waits for her halo to ask *is the milk very heavy?* She doesn’t ask. Frustrated
the mother turns around and to meet the woman’s ice water eyes, and finds instead she has reached the
fish monger’s case. She holds up a blue-veined gray curl of muscle. It’s large enough to circle her wrist,
which looks suddenly quite charming wrapped in the tail, or is it the body, of the last stop for plastic
jugs. Receiver ocean, halo-free waves, nothing but shadows dropping onto shadows, toxic scales, good
toxins and people toxins all mixed up, the mother asks her new cuff *was it cold in that freezer?* They
drive home in silence and find the children lined up on the front steps. Weary and regal, the mother
hands them their milk, keys to the eldest, and they file inside to drink in the bothersome dusk out of
gritty jam jars and chipped mugs, like a picture book. The mother wishes to hide in among her faerie
children. A child herself, or a toy pony threadbare with affection and frustration and fever grips. She
checks her wrist. The time is coming, the shell clicks. She draws the first bath, draws lukewarm water
out of the old tank, and pushes her shoulders under to the count of thirty. Or forty. Maybe she ought
to count forty, now, though there’s no one else keeping score.

11

12

Fact-Simile

Sarah Rose Etter

Periods of the Aftermath
I.
Three-day weeping period, sobs jutting from throat, temporary jetties. The smiling man is an enemy.
The laughing man should be destroyed with weapons bigger than mouth.
II.
Two-week no-touching period, skin repelling fingers. The country is a man-made wound traversed daily,
blood on the bottoms of shoes, on the hands.
III.
Two-month no-eating period, days of only broth, unable to press the jaw with strength. Men belly up to
buffets: Eat the meat, eat the ham, especially the ham, grind of pink flesh between pearled teeth. Men
are still laughing, bellies are still growing. The rest of the world goes gaunt, goes ghost.
IV.
Four-year no-money period. Money from banks slid under mattress. A new song to hiss: Savings are for
the revolution.
V.
Four-year no-joy period, silent threat hovering over the throat like a knife, a stress that brings ribs forth.
Try to be normal: Date, make a joke, drink coffee. But the body has only two goals: Rise up, fight.
VI.
Daily assault period. Swastikas on the buildings, small evil suns in the morning. Walking down the street,
a man grabs for crotch, shoves pleasure with his voice, hisses: You would like it.
VII.
Endless war period. Put the mace and the knife in your bag. Walk down the street waiting for it, waiting
for it, waiting for what? It is just off in the distance, just out of sight. It has an awful violence, that
blood-red cloud, hovering, the drenching burgundy swallowing you next.

Fact-Simile

Laura Da’

It Might Rain Diamonds on Neptune
I share the birthday month of October with my only son. At the tail end of my thirty-fifth year, my body
started molting from the inside out and I began quickly to die. All that season I had been falling asleep,
face to the carpet, as I played with my son. I would wake walled in and surrounded by a Lilliputian world
of crenelated Lego constructions and Matchbox cars parked end to end.
It happened fast. I lifted my son up for a candid photo over the soft and sweet expanse of his fifth
birthday cake. He was heavy, but I was strong. In my family, we joke about how long we carry our babies.
The following week my doctor called me to say that my kidneys were failing. I was told to preserve my
abdominal muscles for surgery by refraining from any strain.
Dialysis is a long story of pain and cavernous, marrow-deep fatigue. I only recollect the tenderness
of the surgeon as she initialed incision points all along my torso because it reminded me of my son’s
fingers flitting across the interactive screen at a science museum that summer.
Now I spend four hours each day tethered to the slim plastic tubes that are keeping me alive. Sometimes
I glimpse the shadows of my son’s hands and the flashes of movement as he pushes his toys in a
prescribed route outside my sickroom door.

13

Fact-Simile

14

Laynie Browne

In Garments Worn by Lindens
our body knows to disobey
Poetry is undrinkable mead worth imbibing, the need to place
something in the mouth. Not needles, lips, or curling scripts of trees.
Easily confused with unspoken eyes and indiscernible tremors. A
liquid which warms until you stagger and eventually dream. Candles
break fevers and illuminate births.

afraid of losing the dimensions of nakedness
Turn embroidery around, sequester the underside, but don’t be seen
in the act of reversals. Bring the frayed edges you cannot feign,
essential loneliness of all mothers. Dress in unguents. Sequels bough
to the headless apprentices adorned in fomentations. Or dressed in
the clothes of every person passing. Exhaustion comes from leading
irreparable lives. Cut any circumstance you wouldn’t want seen: iron
roots, copper branches, silver leaves. She was solidity, or a series of
waves in air.

hidden bleeding
Paste place in a jar, as remedy. You will not feel well unless having
walked miracles. The unwritten does not calm you. Do I
misinterpret alchemical leanings? Whether arduous or effortless, I’ll
be anaphora. The sacred geometry of a fastening nomenclature.
Though you take a strong dose, verse revises musical lungs. I only
have this once. To leave earth and fly to heavens. And will not be
contained.

In Garments Worn by Lindens is an homage text for the poet Rosmarie Waldrop. All titles
are taken from her book Lawn of Excluded Middle.

Fact-Simile

Miriam Sagan

manifesto
In Zen monasteries, monks chant at meal time: we eat to support practice. Now it is time for us as
women to commit: we eat to support justice and equality and safety for ourselves and others. What does
that mean to you? Planting a garden? Planning a demonstration? Writing a letter? Boycott? Donation?
Civil disobedience? Acts of kindness?
Set your own agenda. This is important, and doesn’t preclude working closely with others. But the act
of commitment comes from your heart alone. And to eat to support something doesn’t mean binging
on junk food or television. Set your highest good, and prepare to fight for it.
1. Don’t wear dangling earrings to a demonstration (they can get caught in a baton).
2. Keep your passport current.
3. Know your friends, your enemies, and yourself.
4. Wear shoes you can run in, even in your dreams.
5. Be aware of your inner Nazi so her appearance doesn’t overwhelm you.
6. Be aware of you inner Bodhisattva so HER appearance doesn’t overwhelm you.
7. Keep your emergency or bail money hidden in your (comfortable) shoe.
8. Remember that how you feel is often not the most important thing in a situation.
9. Change your passwords to the names of your grandmothers to be reminded of your ancestors.
10. Take the earth with you wherever you travel.
11. Use birth control as needed, and mother everyone’s children.
12. As the sage Hillel said: If not now, when?
13. Go!

15

16

Fact-Simile

Indira Ganesan

Message in a Bottle
Because it was quiet, and because I had written already this morning, because I had my second cup of
coffee, and because the cats were asleep, I looked at a dried flowers project on my counter. Earlier in
the month, I saved the birthday flowers my family sent. The rose, pink orange from a yellow center, was
especially nice, and I wanted to layer it in a bottle with scabiosa atropurpurea, sweet purple pincushion. As
I placed the flower petals into the glass, I thought, is this what I should be spending my time on, fussing
with dried rose petals and jars, three days after the election? Surely I should be calling my congressman
right now. I have been noticing I get tailgated more than usual, and now I wondered if my Clinton
Kaine bumper sticker was attracting the irate drivers? Our college had held a space for faculty to voice
their election upset, and this weekend there was be a rally in a newly declared ‘Sanctuary City” nearby,
a place that will work to overcome the prejudice that has become normalized this past year. Until midJanuary we have a kick-ass First Lady who is strong, brilliant, and fearless. There will be a march making
women’s rights visible again in the U.S. We must fight being disheartened. Artists and writers must make
whatever creative work we can. That is the message: keep making art, keep dedicating it to a non-violent
aesthetic, vow to act more peaceful yourself, even if neighbors and drivers irritate you, and work with
what remains to make something extraordinary.

Fact-Simile

17

In Lieu of Reviews

Again, we’re adjusting our typical fare to make space for nourishment specific to the times we
find ourselves in. And so, a reading list of free material available online specially curated by the
writers in our special feature.
“Kali Takes America”
by Vera de Chalambert
from Rebelle Society
recommended by Hoa Nguyen
http://www.rebellesociety.com/2016/11/18/veradecha
lambert-kali/
Elderly’s Not My Country
edited by Jamie Townsend & Nicholas Deboer
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6LsqnSATqgy
QUh5SU8yeGtaQ2M/view
Utopia
by Bernadette Mayer (Tender Buttons Press)
http://www.tenderbuttonspress.com/products/bernadettemayers-utopia?utm_source=Tender+Buttons+Press&utm_
campaign=9eb1098a2e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_
25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_951fae2abe9eb1098a2e-250295749&mc_cid=9eb1098a2e&mc_
eid=bc9212353f
Brain Pickings
by Maria Papova
recommended by Indira Ganesan
https://www.brainpickings.org
When in Rome: Can Women Bring Down Trump?
by Ariel Levy
from The New Yorker
recommended by Laynie Browne
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/28/canwomen-bring-down-trump
Forget the Tie. Give a Gift That Matters.
by Nicholas Kristof
from The New York Times
recommended by Laynie Browne
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/opinion/gifts-thatmake-a-difference.html?rref=collection/column/nicholas-kr
istof&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=s
tream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlac
ement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0

I sit on my bench
and disperse with the train crowd
you know these are cherries by the rough bark
also the fruit
you know a tree fell here
by how finely saplings grew
now take a consequential breath
the wedge you cut has all the lemonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s juice
nest held by feathers moving in it
my eyes have no color but what they saw

Fact-Simile

19

still-blown
the barrage
softens me down
a lifetime at this age
little to redeem
and less to shore
unsure which marrings of the faรงade
were the famed
ravages of war
and which were made
by an initial architect
for authenticity
a barbarian might note and serenely spare

20

Fact-Simile

shed red at dusk
then white again in the redder sky
tomatoes where the tulips were
meadow in every
unmown angle
the neighbor boy whips
a rope against a barn wall
the paint has come away to look
like anyone’s portrait as a patch of ill-formed light
anyone’s portrait as a mess of boards
it’s not the dying but the disentangling
and every death is young

Fact-Simile

21

trail demands crossing many creeks
demands pausing near the home with a chained drive
they are selling cauliflower
just before the chain
having lived enough
any coincidence is ordinary
I suppose somebody lived
on every street
as so often on meeting
the dead the dead ask what are you
and you could answer anything
but usually say alive

22

Fact-Simile

of all the metamorphoses I can never remember
what people turn into but why
snow in the cistern
so often the dead in apartments
in other parts of this city
spoken to fantastically or distantly all this time
so one dies and what has changed
much as cooking well becomes
not calculation or performance of arduous craft
but any evening now

Fact-Simile

23

rather than a conclusive month
hour the restaurant owners dine
bottle excessive enough to exchange for a meal
nothing lost
over the tracks
straining as though if you strain
you can see
any train
I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mind it late
given such a tremendous sail
who alive would mind
who alive would mind
who alive would mind
the smallness of our boat

24

Fact-Simile

Travis A Sharp

Body Is a Daffodil I Stare & Sniff Every Chance I Get
If this sadness is a form
of resistance then
we’re doing very
well body & it’s a matter
of integrity a matter
of meter the output
of how much we haven’t
been saying to one an
other in the span of time
spent not wondering about
the output of what
we have been signaling
to ourselves & what
would that be body

Fact-Simile

Christopher Klingbeil

how the tracks then had become as if an always presence. the changes made in us, sussing out
the versions of ourselves. at first across the river. then in the wind. & in the sweep of snow on
either side of the rails built in your name. then how the tracks had wove in the sun & through
the green and golden wood beside the river and its remains. the cutroot space between last
century’s trees and the centurion of the name we’d called ourselves beside the river. we’d been
once to a place so far away we’d never hope see again

25

Fact-Simile

26

Matt Trease

10 Modern Cases of Feral
for Shauna Potocky
Without the colonizers, I
find great imagination
creativity
banginâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;
them pleasure machines
I was macrobiotic and loved
the deer

jaws. The sweet
stalk will bend
that veneer
touch the irrational
primitive impulse
to dispense

Fact-Simile

Ellen Welcker

from The Pink Tablet

Cyberspace is all mom jokes, all
woof,
all
yer mom’s so chilly, she’s hot.
Cry wolf but no proof makes a liar out of you.
She is a wolf. So are you.
Is mom circling again?
This is all just pretend.
If it’s not happening, it can’t end.

27

28

Fact-Simile

She’s a wolf I’d like to milf. She’s a wilf
O, but he’s got her cells in him, too.
Little bit-o’-mama running like a pack through his blood.
Denning up deep in the pons.
The guard hairs stand up while the under hairs insinuate.
She’s got that itchy aitchbone, she’s jonesin’.
She’s been eating those milkbones.
My tick-dread grows.
So furryblack & furryblue.
I’d cut off my tail to cure myself of you
or you’d cut off my tail, as proof of my disease
or to cure the world of me, or—what’s reason
when you don’t need one.

Fact-Simile

a dog needs attention, a dog
rolls over to get her tummy scratched
a bitch is a tension lessener
(sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tight)
this shuffle is a shame spiral,
a shame spiral.
Mama, a person
is a person through
other persons.
what do you want her to be?
a regular woman?

29

30

Fact-Simile

Davy Knittle

coast grade

all my namely beloveds
live in my body
bee in my punnetts
made me short
against all odds
your devices make it
me against all ads
all summer dark
goes to shaven
shave the good earth
and cold it
and bring it back
the lakefront makes
it all more immediate
hold and long for dear life
say cheese here
and hear nothing
here its dead everywhere
a cold body baggie
body by milk
baby by night
namely and long by day
buy and buy or hide from it
everyone in the lake in boats
everyone under the sun

Fact-Simile

31

Brian Teare

People that look out with their backs to the world represent something
that isn’t possible in this world.

—Agnes Martin

||
||
||
too
ill to leave home
I think of the sentence
||
||
||
||
Agnes
is famous for
and admit I don’t know
||
||
||
||
what
it means
to turn your back to the world
||
||
||
||
and
paint against it
all its antagonistic
||
||
||
||
and
contesting parts I know she chose the grid
||
||
||
||
for
its purity its signature without ego I know
||
||
||
||
too
she chose to leave
in each line evidence
||
||
||
||
of
her hand in the process of drawing
I think
||
||
||
||
about turning my back to the world and writing
||
||
||
||
but
I
when I turn inward and look
understand
||
||
||
||
the
assemblage from first to last
I am the way
||
||
||
||
her
hand everywhere
fastens the grid
||
||
||
||
to
itself with a line a pencil body
mind
||
||
||
||
there’s
nowhere the world doesn’t hold me here
||
||
||

32

Fact-Simile

I painted a painting called This Rain.
—Agnes Martin

why return again to
a limited vocabulary
the way symptoms
recur during a day
my body becomes
a repeated thought
my mind returns
to the meal I can’t eat
if I eat I won’t sleep
for the pain of it
I return again to my
limited vocabulary

it’s the inexhaustible
nature of limitation
using what few words
I’m allowed to keep
I try to describe rain
for the pain of it
I try to describe rain
a repeated thought
the way we experience
a picture makes it real
it’s the inexhaustible
symptom during a day

I try to describe the meal
I can’t eat I won’t sleep while I think of it
a picture makes it real

Fact-Simile

33

As grass that is hard to grasp cuts the hand itself.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;from The Dhammapada

I have no memory
for a long time
people are just like the grass
for a long time
I lie on my back
feeling otherwise
all events take place

loving questions
because I think

in the present tense
I have no answers
the teacher Agnes says
I lie on my back
I have no choice
pain is this verb

I have to live this life

whose gist I feel

as I know it to be

led by mind
beneath my ribs
a blade of grass doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t amount to much
formed by mind
a statement
phrased as a question

that is also my body

Fact-Simile

34

That is enough for death, now for real life.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Agnes Martin

most days
a remove
between me
and real life
not people
not things
just images
bus glass

not my hand
a hand holds
the book that
just yesterday
I read closely
so many days
I say goodbye
to my mind

glare
dog-eared page

Fact-Simile

35

good days
it feels like
simile canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t
return to
make it feel
I stood once
the page
on the side
of the highway
and turn
in Wyoming
sky so close
its corner up
curved away

36

Fact-Simile

Tracy Dimond

TAKE A LONG WALK HOME / LONG WALK HOME /
TAKE
I paint my nails hot pink. It’s Fuchsia Power, so I know
that feminine display has a name. Now I feel like I joined
the crowd. The state of a manicure is a sign of existential
motivation. If you want to turn back choices, go to the
basement so time will tick at a slower rate.
Invest in technology, then remember that the most accurate
clock uses tinfoil. Maybe keep that stuff off your head.
Time is a measure of chaos. A body is a measure of health.
Take care of both: don’t exit your car quickly at a gas
station because you can set yourself on fire.
Don’t show your hand. If you are a student, you should get
a student ID for the discounts. You won’t have them again
until you are old enough to be sincere without undercutting
irony. Remember that everyone has to clean their home.
Will you let go of control when approaching nature?
Pansies bloom while lingering over a first love. Hearts
hold, but I should have known it wasn’t going to work I
said I just want to be happy and he replied that’s not
something you can want.
Clouds move past the moon on a long walk home. It feels
like cheating to walk less than three blocks to an apartment.
I’m not looking to be handed entrance. Every time I go
outside I think taking out the trash.
Nervous laughter puts others at ease. Seek the value in hard
work. Bleach hair to emphasize light. Buy teeth whitener to
emphasize snarl. Look into the terror when you realize
credibility is a construct. Follow wires.

Fact-Simile

PLACE LIKE IDENTITY / PLACE LIKE IDENTITY /
PLACE
Be a blank slate or explosion of identity. Don’t apologize
for the inconvenience. Follow the road signs to hell, but
stop to read the insurance bills.
Individuality is ready on a discount clothing rack. Notice
that smell. The space heaters are on for the season.
In parking lots we find place. Let’s explain who we are and
why expectations are crushing. The older we get, the harder
it is to escape history.
We can’t clean ourselves with bleach though the stink is
under our nails. It would be easier to fuck the men that
smile at me. Example: I said no and he said but he bought
me dinner.
You know what they say about politics: change takes
money. Business casual isn’t the only avenue for respect.
Apply to work at a strip club. Be paid for a body.
What if we all revealed our under-secrets? Look out for
opportunity and purpose. Survival is an ambivalent
concept.

37

38

Fact-Simile

DID YOU COVER UP / DID YOU COVER UP / DID
YOU COVER UP / DID YOU COVER
You can’t pretend to be an animal for long. Soak in the sun,
buried. There is progress assumed in time. Interrogate in
your dreams.
A costume is no attachment to identity. It’s the impact of a
different wardrobe. Youth in infinity defined by tan lines.
A summer wardrobe is ready for the sun like the neutral
tide. Do you know how to talk about femininity divorced
from fuckability?
I paint my nails and think gel is enough to keep it together.
Design a five vice limit. Listen to knees and lips tell a
story.
It’s all fun and games until it’s time to go outside. I don’t
want to hear the natural sounds of men hollering at me.
You know what they say about politics: change takes
money. Business casual isn’t the only avenue for respect.
Apply to work at a strip club. Be paid for a body.
I pull out my passport. Take me somewhere with this—
burn my social security card and repaint my face. I chop off
my unicorn hair in the new year.

Fact-Simile

ARE YOU EVEN RELEVANT / ARE YOU EVEN
RELEVANT / ARE YOU EVEN
Body confidence is walking into traffic without looking
both ways. Scream threats from background music: Hope I
don’t lose it tonight.
Have these websites found the landmine in my data?
Advertisements are art if I am your hobby. A nervous laugh
relaxes furrowed brows.
Be an inspiration crying to the tides. Stroke my leg and tell
me tattoos are the clearest scars. Still, nothing really
matters if I’m frustrated with everyone equally.
Did I tell you about the time I mistook a walker for a gun?
He tolerated small talk, but I was out of condoms. He held
my waist and sneered I know you’re doing this for the
looks.
Can I plant synthetic trees every place I wanted to be
anonymous? I’m waiting for a second wind, so I feel my
bones belong to me.

39

Fact-Simile

40

rob mclennan

A dream of origins

At last you have seen
flesh
Sandy Pool, Undark
1.
How little, we
have to show for
the model of
not knowing
dream, and
where to lose
the placement of
a hinge

2.
To remain, as often,
on the outside
a theory of
distinct states
conjunctive, scraped
across the coastal region
where our bodies
separate, distinct
a notion,
knowledge
drowned, like
silhouettes

Fact-Simile

Erasures, driftwood

1.
Grains of rock salt, in
the teaspoon.
Abstract apart
like stars.

2.
A finger candle,
steeped
into a pink room.

3.
Air traffic, uncontrolled,
remote.
Return here, bees.

41

Fact-Simile

42

jared hayes

from h o l l o s o n g s

*
in between
personal ways
of eternal
high become
romance out
of erasure
become essence
of indescribable
intention in
between screeches
of the
mighty in
between creaky
human continuum
become running
into feeling
become literally
filled with
thinking become
being mystical
pale afterglow
on ridge
in between
dazzle dream
talk &
here &
here again
then here
& still
& between

*

Fact-Simile

*
to witness
this changing
surface it
cannot be
called void
or not
void permanent
diaspora an
epic of
prayers and
there is
nothing in
the universe
like diamond
nothing in
the mind
*

43

Fact-Simile

44

Derrick Ortega

[The Black Lake]

MIRROR FIXED TO KNIFE:

The mortars are shrilling their symphony

practice again.
(MONCE unlocks and opens his cage as to bar the sun from peeking
between its slim shadows.)
MONCE: I have a grenade if you would like to skip this part. It’s
covered in a fine mist so you have to hold its breath for itself. But
you won’t find the pin because I’ve already eaten it.)

(MONCE lifts his shirt and reveals the tattoo of a pigeon with the pin
in its beak.)
MONCE:

(MONCE wipes his brow with MIRROR FIXED
dribbles across a reflection of ignited breath.)

TO KNIFE

our

and his sweat

Fact-Simile

(A river never flows, but rolls in cubes of splash.)
MONCE:

That idea intrigues me.

MFK: You’re easily ‘suaded between each wet collision. Maybe
you’ve been looking into the black too long. Without eyelids,
you’re always in this blink.
MONCE:

Without eyelids, I have no imagination.

(MONCE skins his face and masks it with ghillie and vines. But a red
scorpion crawls along his skull, rests between two eyes.)
MONCE: 1000 yards away, another branch just waved. It wants to
listen to music of the after.
MFK: And you think you’re ahead of this? This was a wind you’ve
already collapsed.
MONCE: It still has ears, though. Pretend for the both of us that
music soothes a breathing corpse.

(MIRROR FIXED TO KNIFE squints until a shot is fired to the thousand
yard branch, but it uplifts itself and recedes into the consuming
brush. MIRROR switches from squint to squeeze and the pigeon
loses its lift.)

45

Fact-Simile

46

MONCE:

It’s necessary to stick this time.

MIRROR FIXED TO KNIFE:

I never shatter when shot. Promise.

(MONCE holds Promise to his ear, and the eye within sees echoes of
ricochet scaling the walls.)
MONCE (counts the number of W’s the wind stutters before adding
a vowel): One, one, one.
MFK: You mustn’t pray to the sky yet. Its color hasn’t ripened and
your knees are beggars strangled by a keffiyeh.

(MONCE pauses. He tears half his chewing gum through his teeth,
spreads it thinly over his lidless eyes, and blinks.)
MONCE:

We have almost gone too far.

MFK: Yes, but there’s still a matter of the black lake. We must
drown every last shell casing along with your faded fatigues. They
have grown lazy and distinguishable to the desert’s fog.

(MONCE takes a swig of sand from his canteen and files down his
teeth. He then gnaws away at Promise before swallowing her sight
of a broken muzzle flash. Like an arrow split on a bullseye, each
bolt sprouts beneath a glassy dust storm.)

Fact-Simile

47

Andrew Brenza

Hercules
Hercules
Imagine the universe is a soap bubble sliding off the big toe of some alien creature who, in the hurry to get
clean in his alien creature shower, moves fast enough to make it possible. Then imagine that, sometimes,
you are that alien creature, in your alien creature shower, moving fast enough to make it possible, in the
hurry to get clean, the soap bubble of a universe sliding off the thick edge of your dumb toe, and bursting.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*

*

*
*

*

*
*

*

*

*

*
*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*
*

*

*

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Thus, the sun is set to rising in its particular way. Thus, your head is shaped along its paths in its particular
way. Thus, the sun is shining on the paths of your head in its particular way. Thus, your head is set to
shape the rising of the sun in its particular way. Thus, elsewhere, it is different in its particular way -different,
but not too different,
like the differences
between butterflies
or thumbs.

Fact-Simile

48

Laura Christina Dunn

Spider Blue

A scribble of birds are erased
by their own movement north.
If I erase a word, I want to talk
about whether it matters.
Matter has the same root as material:
timber, substance. Something
fell from a beetle’s lips:
the exposed roots of pine trees
are brown skulls in the night
seeking flame. Now I am
the throats of a bird,
hollow in winter. Now
I am a match in my own eyes,
burnt to the thumb as a way of telling
time. Parker wrote,
“You might as well live,”
and I am breathing
where the cold green branches fall,
and a lake shattered by sound
puts itself back together again
in silence.

*

Fact-Simile

You have a visitor. Your eyes are pools of water.
You own as much of this world
as can be encompassed
in strips of ox hide. The spiders net the branches
to make a home of the invisible.
I would say, Bluebells, tundra, ulcerative. But I
could not find the words to make you
stay. Wobbly on my pen, I am a human who thinks
the only pretty pictures are landscapes
of green and blue and tame.
This condition is trite
but also a longing for our first home
on the savannah.
Overlooking a strip mall,
the sun rises like a spider crawling
out of the ground. You ran your fingers down my stomach,
said they were five drops of water. You took me to the hill
with bent trees like a comb-over. From the top,
I could see hills of white houses.
When I do see beauty, it is my ancestors looking
for a place they can survive.

*

49

50

Fact-Simile

Matter ultimately comes from Latin, mater, or “mother”
for the person who first turned us into substance.
She had shorn her hair off with water
as my family watched the river grip
the town around the neck, strands clung
tightly to her scalp. The flood again.
She felt again the restlessness of an islander—
the eyes wondering where the highway
leads, after all exits are blocked.
Her accent came back calling 911,
and my brother and I wondered who
was speaking in the next room.
Finally, the sun rose and stayed overhead,
erasing the water like beams that wanted
to be something else, wanted to be matter.
The singer Dalida had a voice like a river undammed.
and she would sing in any language
because as you sing, the accent falls away. She left a note
of six words when she died.
“Life has become insupportable. Forgive me”—
this letter is the history of a world desiccated of ideas
on how to remain. Now what is lost

Fact-Simile

is not love but the story of love, where we write
of partings at dawn—an hour, spider
blue, the substance that passed
through my brother’s veins—
a long night leaving, the beginning electric,
a fist fading to white
from holding on.

51

52

Fact-Simile

Hilary Plum

Comrade

The day they found Shahid’s body I wasn’t writing, not a
word. I was babysitting, drinking too much tea and fielding
unending questions about worksheets. My sister-in-law had
needed to cross the city to see a doctor about her pregnancy.
Bleeding, my wife had said, which her sister would not have
disclosed. You can type, answer your phone, all that at their
home, my wife had said. Usually I adored how her remnant
unease with the language made her say things like type when
she meant write, but today I was irritated, I who had worked
so hard but unsuccessfully to rid myself in every dialect of
an American accent.
When the phone call had come from Shahid’s
editor, his own Italian accent so strong I had to ask him to
repeat and repeat again, I cried out. The children must have
looked up, seen me standing, my head against the door frame
and the door open, I had meant to walk into the garden for
better reception, but on hearing the news I was shrill as a
hawk shrieking into a field. Afterward I was surprised both
at the force of my reaction and the fact that the editor had
called me at all, a choice I couldn’t quite justify. The police
called you? I asked the Italian, who said no, it was only that he
had been phoning Shahid at the very moment they pulled his
body from the canal, and someone had answered. If he was
in the canal, I said, how did his phone still work? I don’t know,
the Italian said. But I remembered: Shahid kept his phone
zipped up in a waterproof sleeve, I am tired of getting new
ones, he’d said, I spill tea all over myself at least once a month.
Shahid did not drown; he was beaten to death.
The canal was far enough from the city, a full
hundred kilometers, that they might have thought he
wouldn’t be found.
But no—how then would his death have served
as warning? Without a body the message, as they say, could
not be received. They’d dumped him, checked the lock
schedule, and known that before long his name would turn
up in the news.
Once the Italian hung up I sat down in the garden
with a cold tea and was still there when Fawzia returned
from her appointment, her expression concerned as she
came through the gate, or perhaps it was merely the fatigue
of the bus ride. When she saw me her face changed in a way
I couldn’t describe, until I realized from her sharp question
that she feared something had happened to her sister, my
wife. No, no, I said, seeing the children now gathered to the
door, no, a friend, a friend is dead.
But I blame myself for using this word—was he a

friend? We would chat, sometimes among others we would
have a meal, but Shahid was not what you’d call friendly, and
though you’d nudge him to tell a story or watch him as a joke
was told, he maintained his charming but—I said to others
and even once to him—overplayed reserve. In his absence
we discussed how his sources among the fundamentalists
were almost too good, his coverage of them almost too
intimate. This isn’t quite what we meant; rather, how in him
pragmatism and zealotry were so potently allied. Will you
come on for a segment about the murdered journalist? I got
a call from the West Coast indy radio show I appeared on
occasionally, and it was then that I skimmed the American
press and saw Shahid’s death had been noted even there—
briefly, but noted. Of course, I said, he was a friend, and
again I hadn’t intended to use that word. Colleague would
have been accurate, though comrade was what next occurred
to me, despite its connotations, which were not what I
meant and which would never have amused Shahid.
It seemed geography and profession had claimed us
for the same side of whatever this was. For seven, eight years
now US drones have bombarded the fundamentalist camps
in the mountains, though protests grow more vehement and
diplomatic relations more strained every year. Bombs land
again on an impoverished village, or, in the brutal error the
American military is almost laughably prone to, a wedding party.
A boy escaping one strike runs up the mountain to be killed an
hour later in another. Discovered among the dead in a camp of
militants are a few members of the intelligence services. Allies,
these nations, and yet. This spring the Americans dived out of
the sky into an unassuming compound in the north, there to
kill not any mere terrorist but the Director. They shot him in
his bedroom triumphantly, his children waiting on the balcony
just outside. His body was thrown to the sea between the two
nations. It was said he had lived here, allegedly undetected, for
years. Such events can only remind one of the magnitude of
their surveillance, my native country overseeing my present
home, so that in moments of real emotion—my eyes damp
in the garden, the Italian incomprehensible on the phone—I
find myself subject to a humiliating self-consciousness, I look
skyward and think I ought to go in. It’s said that they located
the Director by the vibrations of his windows, which when
surveyed by laser over time confirmed that there was one
more man conversing within those walls then ever left their
confines. Soon enough he was dead.
And so, the story somehow continues, was Shahid.
Shahid who didn’t even trust waiters, met his sources

Fact-Simile

amid the crowd on a bus or the thick of a market.
We should talk, I said to him, after he’d
congratulated me on a piece in which I’d nearly proved that
that the intelligence services had interfered in a local election
to the southeast, prevented a recount that had wide popular
support. He looked more interested than I expected. Yes, let’s
meet next week, he said, his eyes bright through dirty glasses.
But time passes and six weeks later he was dead.
What could I say to the radio show, to the US press, to
anyone? Shahid, I might begin, had shown great courage
and had remarkable access to both military and insurgent
fundamentalist sources. Which is how he could so
condemningly detail the degree to which the former had
been infiltrated by the latter. How often the military seemed
in its so-called victories in the mountains to leave supply
lines open; when they moved into villages somehow only
a few token fighters remained. But just what could anyone
prove? Few—really no one other than Shahid—ventured
into that territory to see for themselves, since journalist
after journalist had been kidnapped there.
A few months ago when the navy had quietly purged
its ranks of suspected infiltrators, a vicious attack on one of
its bases followed, thirteen dead. A base not far at all from a
nuclear facility. This was the focus of Shahid’s latest stories, as
fervent as always and as always with his beautiful sources—
sources to die for, the now appalling phrase but one which
we’d used. These sources claimed that the terrorist infiltration
of the military’s ranks was so profound that any attempt to
resist would be cause for war, a war in which, given the speed
and brutality of the retaliation, the thirteen dead sailors, it
must be said that the terrorists were holding their own.
I could only recite Shahid’s achievements, with
perhaps a critical gloss, and offer a few trite sentences on the
man himself. What his murder might mean for journalism
in this besieged nation. We all wanted to write his story,
to do it justice. But despite all intentions and accusations,
fingers pointed even by American generals, the sentence
endured, implacable: The intelligence services deny any involvement
in the journalist’s death.
I couldn’t say how much Shahid’s death might
disturb the economies by which so many across factions
survived. His sources among the fundamentalists would
never talk to me—no one will talk to an American, the
others assured me. We sat around at dinner again, late, very

53

late, so that the heat had at last somewhat subsided, and
insects gathered deafeningly to the lamps, cigarette after
cigarette did not drive them off. It was the sort of gathering
Shahid would rarely have attended and which since his death
I had frequented. No one will talk to an American. But no
one will torture and kill me, either, I said, then recalled that
the facts did not back me up on this, and there was general
laughter, though I wished for silence. Beyond the lamplight
the sky was a deep haze and I was too drunk. Somewhere
to the east a drone dipped into the mountains.
We went on with our work, the intelligence services
went on with theirs. A week later one of Shahid’s sources
turned up: killed in an American strike. He was high up in
the chain, a prize for any reporter or soldier; his number, it
was said, appeared every few days in Shahid’s phone. Of the
two he got the better death—gone in the explosion, not for
him broken ribs, ruptured organs, the numbered lacerations
we read of in the autopsy report on our colleague. Well, I’d
written nothing of Shahid’s murder, but at least—I might
joke, on the right night and in the right company—at least my
fellow countrymen had not been left empty-handed.
Unmanned is an interesting word, I said to my wife. Why do
you always use that word? she said. It’s correct, I said, it’s
what everyone says, the drones are— No, she said, interesting,
this is such an American word, to Americans everything is
always interesting.
I was just making an observation, I said. No, she
said, I mean, yes, this is what I am saying, it’s only interesting
when it happens to someone else. Unmanned, I said,
smiling, I am unmanned! She nodded, then shook her head.
I as a woman am always unmanned, she said, and what does
that mean?
But I didn’t reply, thinking then of Shahid, whose
habits—cell phone zipped up in its sheath, head leaned near
a stranger’s on any bus—in death became facts, stagnant
and singular. Picture the Director, shrouded and sinking
into the waves. His enemies wouldn’t permit him a body: a
symbol the living could claim.
To claim a body, I said aloud once my wife had
left, and I ran my fingers over the keyboard. Those who
had whispered their truths and half-truths to Shahid may
now be silent, their souls still burdened. I would hear you,
I said, but my words meant nothing to the night, the untold
distance, through the smog the winking stars.

54

BIOS
Cynthia Arrieu-King is an
associate professor of creative
writing at Stockton University
and a for mer Kundiman fellow.
Her
books
include
People
are Tiny in Paintings of China
(Octopus Books 2010), Manifest
(Switchback Books 2013) and
her
collaborative book
of
poems written with the late
Hillary Gravendyk (1913 Press
2016). She lives in Philadelphia.
cynthiaarrieuking.blogspot.com.
James Belflower received his
PhD in contemporary poetry
and poetics from SUNY Albany.
His research inter venes in
Postmodern declarations of the
“end of intimacy” by reassessing
how sensory relationships in
poetry, film, architecture, and the
culinary arts complement new
experiences of materiality, affect,
and collectivity. He is the author
of The Posture of Contour / A Public
Primer (Spring Gun Press, 2013),
Commuter (Instance Press, 2009),
and Bird Leaves the Cor nice, winner
of the 2011 Spring Gun Press
Chapbook Prize. His poems,
essays, and reviews appear, or are
forthcoming in: Aufgabe, Fence,
New American Writing, 1913, and
Drunken Boat among others. He
co-curates the Yes! Poetry and
Perfor mance Series in Albany NY
whose mission is to bring writing
into conversation with other art
for ms. You can read more here:
www.jamesbelflower.com.
Andrew Brenza is a librarian
and experimental poet living in
New Jersey. He is the author of
two chapbooks, 8 Skies (Beard of
Bees Press) and 21 Skies (Shirt
Pocket Press). His work can
also be found in various online
and print journals, including
Beloit Poetr y Jour nal, The Cortland

Fact-Simile

Review, Jellyfish, and Sink. His first
full-length collection, Gossamer
Lid was recently released from
Trembling Pillow Press.
Laynie Browne wants to live in a
world in which poetry invents and
invites futures we want to inhabit.
Laura Da’ is a poet and public
school teacher. A lifetime resident
of the Pacific Northwest, Da’
studied creative writing at the
University of Washington and the
Institute of American Indian Arts.
Her first book, Tributaries, won a
2016 American Book Award.
Tracy Dimond co-curates Ink
Press Productions. Her latest
chapbook, I Want Your Tan, was
released in May 2015 by Ink
Press. She is also the author of
Grind My Bones Into Glitter, Then
Swim Through The Shimmer (NAP,
2014) and Sor r y I Wrote So Many
Sad Poems Today (Ink Press, 2013).
Her poems have recently appeared
or are forthcoming in The Ner vous
Breakdown, Bar relhouse, Pinwheel,
Sink Review, and other places.
She holds her MFA in Creative
Writing & Publishing Arts from
the University of Baltimore. She
teaches composition and works
in library event programming.
Indira Ganesan’s last novel
was As Sweet as Honey. She teaches
part-time at Emerson College.
Kim Gek Lin Short is the
author of the cross-genre novels
The Bug ging Watch & Other
Exhibits and China Cowboy, both
from Tarpaulin Sky Press, as well
as the hybrid collections Run
and The Residents. She lives in
Philadelphia with her husband
and daughter.
jared hayes tends to shadows
and their ghosts in portland,
oregon...hayes is the author of

The Dead Love (Black Radish
Books, 2012) and Bandit (Little
Red Leaves’ Textile Series, 2012)...
jared enjoys being in the company
of the Dusie Kollektiv, Black
Radish Books, and Livestock
Editions. if you collect things...
share yr collection with jared at
livestockjared@gmail.com...
Laura
Christina
Dunn
graduated in 2009 from the
MFA program at the University
of Montana. Her poems have
appeared in journals such as At
Length, Fugue, The Bear Deluxe,
Zocalo Public Square, and Alligator
Juniper, among others. Spider Blue,
her chapbook from Dancing Girl
Press, was published in March
2015. She has released three
full-length albums with her band
Laura Dunn and the Ghosts of
Xmas Past, and she is the 2015
recipient of The Oregon Literary
Fellowship in poetry.
Matthew Klane is co-editor
of Flim Forum Press. He is the
author of B (Stockport Flats,
2008), Che (Stockport Flats,
2012), an e-chapbook from Of the
Day (Delete Press, 2014), and an
e-book, My (forthcoming from
Fence Books). He currently lives
and writes in Albany, NY where
he co-curates the Yes! Poetry and
Perfor mance Series and teaches
at the Sage Colleges.
Christopher Klingbeil has
toured the American West as
a government lumberjack and
forester. He took MFAs away
from Boise State and Colorado
State. Recently, his poems have
appeared in Radar, Salt Hill,
and Vinyl Poetr y, among others.
His chapbook, evaporatus, is the
longest chapbook in the world;
it won the 2013 Jenny Catlin
Competition at ELJ Publications.
Davy

Knittle’s

reviews and

Fact-Simile

poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming
in Fence, Jacket2, Denver Quarterly, and Iowa Review.
His first chapbook, cyclorama, was released by The
Operating System in April. He lives in Philadelphia,
where he is a PhD candidate in English at Penn.
Derrick Ortega writes poetry as well as
experimental literature. He is interested in the
fiction of memory and is currently working
on a collection of poems titled “Dunes” about
the space and time of reentering society after
experiencing trauma. His work has been selected
for publication in Small Po[r]tions, Calliope, and Sole
Image. He currently resides in Buena Park, CA with
his spouse, Xenia.

55

Santa Fe Community College for many years. She works
as part of a creative duo, Maternal Mitochondria, with
her daughter, visual artist Isabel Winson-Sagan.
Zach Savich’s newest book of poetry is The
Orchard Green and Ever y Color, from Omnidawn. He
teaches at the University of the Arts.

Travis A Sharp is a queer poet, inter media writer and
book artist living in Seattle. Travis is a co-founding
editor of small po[r]tions jour nal and Letter [r] Press
and is an editor at Essay Press. Travis’ poetry, essays
and inter views have appeared with or are forthcoming
from Columbia Poetr y Review, Big Lucks, Entropy, The
Conversant, Deluge, Tinderbox, Belleville Park Pages, and
elsewhere. Travis has an MFA in Creative Writing and
Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob Poetics from the University of Washington, Bothell,
mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author where Travis tutors and teaches writing. Find more
of nearly thirty trade books of poetry, fiction info at TravisASharp.com.
and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry
Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa A 2015 Pew Fellow in the Arts, Brian Teare is the
Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for recipient of poetry fellowships from the National
the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. His most recent Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the
titles include notes and dispatches: essays (Insomniac Headlands Center for the Arts, the Fund for Poetry,
press, 2014), The Uncertainty Principle: stories, and the American Antiquarian Society. He is the
(Chaudiere Books, 2014) and the poetry collection author of four critically acclaimed books—The Room
If suppose we are a fragment (BuschekBooks, W here I Was Bor n, Sight Map, the Lambda Award2014). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ winning Pleasure, and Companion Grasses, a finalist for
ground press, Chaudiere Books, The Gar neau the Kingsley Tufts Award. His fifth book is The Empty
Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen Form Goes All the Way to Heaven (Ahsahta, 2015). An
seconds: a jour nal of poetr y and poetics (ottawater. Assistant Professor at Temple University, he lives in
com/seventeenseconds),
Touch
the
Donkey South Philadelphia, where he makes books by hand
(touchthedonkey.blogspot.com) and the Ottawa for his micropress, Albion Books.
poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He
spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as Matt Trease is an artist, IT Administrator, and
writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, astrolog y junkie living in Seattle, WA. His poems
and regularly posts reviews, essays, inter views and have appeared recently in The Cordite Poetr y Review,
other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com
filling Station, V+L-A=K, Otoliths, small po(r)tions, and
Hotel Amerika. He is the author of the chapbook Later
Danielle Pafunda’s books include The Dead Heaven: Production Cycles (busylittle1way designs).
Girls Speak in Unison (Bloof Books 2017), Natural His idea of romance is an Exquisite Corpse. He is
Histor y Rape Museum, Manhater, and Iatrogenic. She Temperance crossed with The Hierophant. He also
lives in the desert with her children.
makes good tacos.
Hilary Plum is the author of the novel They Dragged
Them Through the Streets (FC2, 2013) and the essay
Watchfires, forthcoming in 2016. She is a book-review
editor with the Kenyon Review and co-edits Rescue
Press’s Open Prose Series. She lives in Philadelphia.

Ellen Welcker has other poems from “The Pink
Tablet” in Dusie and H_NGM_N. Chapbooks Mouth
That Tastes of Gasoline (alice blue, 2014), and The
Urban Lightwing Professionals (H_NGM_N, 2011),
and a book, The Botanical Garden (Astrophil Poetry
Prize, Astrophil Press, 2010) also exist. She lives
Miriam
Sagan’s most recent collection in Spokane, WA, and works with the Bagley Wright
GEOGRAPHIC (Casa de Snapdragon) won the 2016 Lecture Series on Poetry. With the writer Shar ma
Arizona/New Mexico Book Award in poetry. She Shields, she is building Scablands Lit, an organization
founded and headed the creative writing program at that supports writers in the Inland Northwest.